9. Administrator Settings (YaST) - Introduction to the YaST Setup Tool

Updated: 22 January, 2012

9. Administrator Settings (YaST)

YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) is the central tool for system administration.

Kickoff menu => Computer tab => YaST

Default YaST modules
In YaST you can perform almost any system task, with powerful graphical modules, e.g.:

Install and remove software (see next chapter)
Set up your printer
Configure the firewall
Enable and disable system services
Configure network sharing (samba)
Format and partition your drives
Enable NTP daemon
And much, much more...

Additional YaST modules
A lot more YaST modules are available than the ones included in the default installation (read about installing packages in the next chapter). Some notable modules not installed by default are:

Apache web server (package: yast2-http-server)
SSH daemon (package: yast2-sshd)
FTP server (package: yast2-ftp-server)
NFS server (package: yast2-nfs-server)
And many more...

You don't have to use YaST if you don't want to. You can achieve the same things and more using command line tools and manually editing configuration files.

9.1 YaST in the Terminal

The YaST modules can also be used in a terminal (ncurses mode) - this is very useful for servers with no graphical environment running, for remote access via SSH, or in case your graphical environment fails.

Simply run yast as root in a terminal.

yast

Navigate using arrow keys, Enter and Alt+[highlighted letters] (e.g. Alt+Q to quit).

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